Stowe Prize Part II: How the Word Is Passed at Nook Farm

Stowe Prize Part II

How the Word Is Passed at Nook Farm

September 22, 2022

How the Word Is Passed Book Cover Author Photo of Dr. Clint Smith

(Photo by Carletta Girma)

**Due to inclement weather, Stowe Prize Part II will take place as an entirely VIRTUAL event.**

Join us for a free, live-streamed conversation with Dr. Clint Smith on his Stowe Prize-winning book, How the Word Is Passed, and the Stowe Center’s role and responsibility as a museum teaching race history through the narrative of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s life and writing. Linda Norris of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience will be the conversant. Following the Q & A with Dr. Smith, the Stowe Center is proud to present Poets Respond to Dred, a live spoken word poetry performance of original poems responding to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1857 antislavery novel. Curated by Versatile Poetiq, Poets Respond to Dred showcases the artistry of six local poets, including Frederick-Douglass Knowles II, T’Challa Williams, Tarishi “M.I.D.N.I.G.H.T.” Shuler, Aaron Jafferis, Mind.Evolution, and Patrick “Rico” Williams. The poems will be live-streamed.

In a deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country’s most essential stories are hidden in plain view—whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods—like downtown Manhattan—on which the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women, and children has been deeply imprinted.

Informed by scholarship and brought alive by the story of people living today, How the Word Is Passed is a landmark work of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in making sense of our country and how it came to be.

Dr. Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic. How the Word Is Passed was a number one New York Times bestseller and was named one of the ten best books of 2021 by the New York Times Book Review. Dr. Smith’s poetry collection, Counting Descent, won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He has received numerous awards and honors, including fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Emerson Collective, the Art for Justice Fund, and Cave Canem. His essays, poems, and scholarly articles have been published in The New Yorker, The New Republic, and The Paris Review, among others. He is a 2014 National Poetry Slam champion and a 2017 recipient of the Jerome J. Shestack Prize for the American Poetry Review. He received his B.A. from Davidson College and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. He is host of the YouTube series Crash Course Black American History and was previously a high school English teacher.

“A work of moral force and humility, How the Word Is Passed offers a compelling account of the history and memory of slavery in America. Writing from Confederate Army cemeteries, former plantations, modern-day prisons, and other historical sites, Clint Smith moves seamlessly between past and present, revealing how slavery is remembered and misremembered—and why it matters. Engaging and wise, this book combines history and reportage, poem and memoir. It is a deep lesson and a reckoning.”

―Matthew Desmond, winner of the 2017 Stowe Prize for Evicted

Location Virtual

Doors Open

Program 6:30-9:00 pm

School Group Interest Form

School Group Interest Form 2024

Thank you so much for your interest in a group tour at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center! Please help us schedule your visit by answering the questions below.

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If yes, have you already contacted The Mark Twain House?

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Isabella Beecher Hooker

Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker (1822-1907)
An ardent member of the woman’s suffrage movement, Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker joined in the cause along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Isabella was the first child of Lyman Beecher and his second wife, Harriet Porter Beecher.

Isabella began her education at Catharine Beecher’s Hartford Female Seminary and lived with her sister Mary Perkins. In 1841 she married John Hooker, a descendant of Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford. John Hooker was a lawyer and an abolitionist.

In the early 1860s Isabella got involved in the woman’s suffrage movement. Isabella joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony as a member of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in 1869. She was a founding member of the Connecticut Woman’s Suffrage Association. Isabella’s ideas of equality were influenced by John Stuart Mills’ On Liberty and the Subjection of Women.

In 1871, Isabella organized the annual convention of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in Washington D.C. and presented her argument before the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate. Her husband, John Hooker, believed in his wife and supported her activities. He helped Isabella draft a bill to the Connecticut Legislature giving married women the same property rights as their husbands. The bill passed in 1877. Isabella annually submitted a bill granting women the right to vote, but it did not pass in her lifetime.